E3 07: Medal of Honor Airborne - preview

A look at the most impressive level yet shown

We've been invited to check out Medal of Honor: Airborne time and time again. This latest visit, though, put us in touch with a brand new level that really showcased what separates the game from its competition. Based on an actual German construction, the Flakt%26uuml;rme, orFlak Tower- a massive gun-emplaced tower designed to defend against air strikes on key cities.

Where does this leave you? Parachuting down, of course, past a massive concrete tower that's crawling with Nazi soldiers (of course). Then, we presume,you have to make your way back up. We presume that because the guy who played the demo couldn't really manage to take more than a few steps before getting capped.

The level typified the utter chaos atmosphere that the developers of Airborne are clearly going for. Since you pick your own ground position as you glide down from the sky, there's action everywhere: and with a tower offering up so many vertical situations, you can be thrown in the middle of everything, shot from both the ground and from above you.

We were left with the overwhelming sense of getting into more than we could get out of. As it's the last mission of the game, the developers have worked hard to make it the best. We didn't see enough of it to make our own value judgment about its quality, but the sheer scale of things was impressive. If Airborne can actually achieve what it has set out to do - bring the real chaos of battle to WWII - this game will be the first in a long time in the series to deserve the hype it's generating.